Engineered Natural Materials in Functional Applications

Unknown to many, cork is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource with a range of unique properties that make it an excellent choice for a variety of applications.

Cork has been used for centuries as a stopper in wine bottles, but its characteristics led it to a multiple range of applications, ranging from construction to the aerospace industry.

With its legacy and in a world where the demand for sustainable materials is increasing, there are certainly many more applications to come!

Agriculture and food processing generate a large amount of waste or by-products.

Using these plant-based wastes and through a transformation process, we produce ecoes^TM, a raw material to manufacture products that substitute plastic. Its production uses exclusively plant-based waste, without the addition of additives or chemicals, processed with a disruptive technology.

The result is a fiber with very special properties, a sustainable raw material that replaces plastic in a multitude of uses and products.

• It can be combined with cellulose to be moulded in wet processes
• It can also be die-cut and thermoformed from sheets

The eco fibre gives the resulting product better physical properties, especially increasing its hardness and stiffness.

Why are chemicals made from fossil fuels? Why are plastics – that never break down – used in products that are used once and then thrown away? These were the questions two young researchers asked in the mid-90s when they began their research in natural chemical processes, so-called biomimetics or biomimicry. Based on their research, OrganoClick was founded as a spin-off company from Stockholm University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in 2006.
Today, we are a fast-growing green chemical company with our own product development and manufacturing and we export around the world. But our vision from the start has been the same: a world free from plastic waste and chemical pollution – for a sustainable future.

Greenboats utilizes natural fibre composites across various product categories. The future of these composites will be defined by their entire lifecycle. The interplay between production, sustainability, use, distribution and end-of-life is shaped by the manufacturing process and the combination of materials.
In this presentation Greenboats will provide an overview of these relationships and underscore it with examples of NFC products.

The next-generation of low cost flexible, disposable, portable and potentially wearable electronic systems will require the integration of energy power sources to turn them fully autonomous. The technology and fabrication process of these devices must be compatible with large scale and roll-to-roll manufacturing, which yield the amenability to low cost production, a requirement particularly important for disposable devices. Cellulose paper fulfill these requirements, it has excellent mechanical properties, such as flexibility and foldability and it is a low cost, recyclable and environmental friendly material. It is chemically and mechanically stable under atmospheric conditions and its surface wetting properties can be easily modified so several end applications.
In this work I will give an overview of the work that has been developed at i3N|CENIMAT concerning the use of paper substrates for the development to of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS). Substrates with the view of Biosensor applications and photovoltaic solar cells on paper as a power source for electronic devices on paper or be used as energy harvesting in indoor applications.